Improved Order Management

We’ve managed to kick off the first 2 weeks of 2008 with some great enhancements to the Order screen in Shopify.

Localized Address Display

The first enhancement to the orders screen we added is the localized display of addresses. This means that no matter where your customer lives you’ll see the address in the correct format for that country.

Tracking Numbers

The second new feature is the ability to add tracking numbers to orders. The tracking number can be added while you’re marking your items as shipped. If you don’t know the tracking numbers at the time of shipment you can always add the tracking number later. The tracking number will also automatically link to the carrier’s tracking website so you can quickly look up the tracking history of a shipment.

Risk Assessment

The biggest new feature added is the addition of a risk assessment summary.

Credit card providers use several mechanisms for reducing credit card fraud. The first is called the Address Verification System (AVS). AVS compares the numeric portion of the customer’s billing address and zip code to the information on file with the credit card issuer. This helps reduce a significant amount of fraud because thieves are required to also obtain the billing address information for the credit card they’ve stolen. Visa also provides some compelling information in the Merchant Guide to the Visa Address Verification Service.

The second method to reduce credit card fraud is the validation of the credit card’s Card Verification Value (CVV). The CVV is 3 or 4 digit number on the back of the customer’s credit card and helps to ensure that the buyer has the card physically in their possession. The credit card companies also forbid the storage of the CVV code, so credit cards stolen online wouldn’t be useable.

Shopify has been submitting the buyer’s billing address for address verification and has been requiring the CVV code during checkout for a long time now. What was lacking was the presentation of the information. The gathered data is now presented in an easy to view table that either displays a green check for success or detailed information about the failure.

The last piece of the risk assessment is the IP Address check. The IP address check compares the country of the buyer’s billing address to the country the buyer placed the order from. If there is a mismatch then Shopify will issue the warning so that you can investigate the order with the buyer.

The screenshot above shows a very risky order where the CVV code matched the credit card, but the AVS checks and IP address checks failed.

The new Risk Assessment features are designed to help provide the Shopify store owner with all of the information required to quickly and accurately assess the validity of the orders they receive.